october 17th
I don’t think it would be unfair to say that’s a game we could have won 7 or 8 or 9-1 but for the heroics of the giant Villa keeper.
After Sol Campbell hitting the bar in the first 2 minutes Villa took a shock lead when Lee Hendrie scored a minute later with a left footed shot from just outside the area. There was no sulking for Arsenal though as we tore Villa apart time and time again, only to see Postma save or a last minute intervention from a defender.
After 19 minutes we got an equaliser. Henry, who caused Villa’s defenders heartaches all day, stormed into the box, got hacked down by Delaney and up stepped Robert Pires (who always takes penalties when Henry is the player who has been fouled) and made it 1-1. We continued to make chances and kept running at the Villa defence but things weren’t breaking our way.
The ref was Graham Poll who you won’t be surprised to hear was absolutely crap (and hurrah for football, he’s going to referee next week’s game against United). José Antonio Reyes was taken out a couple times while on a run towards goal, but Poll insisted that the defender had got the ball both times, which was absolute cack. At one point José was taken down by Lee Hendrie, the ref gave nothing and our boy went to have a word with the Trainspotting lookalike cunt. They went face to face and the cowardly little cunt of a Villa player hit the floor as if he’d been headbutted. He has as much class as an empty school. Later José was taken down by Delaney on the edge of the box, again Poll gave nothing, and it was left to Cesc Fabregas to exact revenge as he sent Delaney flying up in the air with a tackle and got himself a yellow card. It was worth it though.
Just before half-time we went 2-1 up. José played a gorgeous pass through to Henry who finished in customary style past Postma.
In the second half we nearly scored some quite breathtaking goals. A series of backheels between Henry and Reyes would certainly have won goal of the season while there were further chances for Bergkamp, Henry and Reyes before Robert Pires made it 3-1. Mathieu Flamini, who came on after JLloyd Samuel tried to break Patrick Vieira’s leg, came forward, Bergkamp passed it to Henry who squared it for Pires and he was never going to miss. Pennant and Robin van Persie (who showed some nice skills) got a run out towards the end as well.
All in all a good day’s work against a Villa team who played the way only an O’Leary team can play against us. For somebody who claims to love ‘the Arsenal’ and the time he spent here he seems determined to send out his teams to extract some kind of revenge for something. They always kick our boys around, they’re always too wound up and with each passing season he becomes less and less popular at THOF.
Favourite moment: Close to the end when Lee Hendrie had the ball on the right hand side and clumsily put it out for a throw to us. Ashley Cole couldn’t stop laughing. I do love Ashley.
Cesc Watch: Brilliant again. For a boy of 17 his passing is just outstanding. I think he’s probably the best player I’ve ever seen at his age. And today I wore my ‘Highly Fabregas’ t-shirt to the pub. Hurrah.
Injury news sees Patrick Vieira extremely doubtful for Wednesday’s game against Panathinaikos. Elsewhere the boss has given Edu a deadline to sort his head out about his future at Arsenal, although if I was playing for Arsenal and I saw Cesc every day I think I’d be looking for a new club.
Alex Ferguson has decided to open his big fat mouth about next week’s Arsenal v United game and has spoken about last season’s contretemps at Old Trafford. According to Demento “What Arsenal players did that day was the worst thing I’ve seen in this sport. No wonder they were so delighted at the verdicts. They conveniently forget things, that mob.”
Now, let’s be serious for a moment. What happened last season was handbags. There were no punches thrown, no knee high tackles were perpetrated on any Norwegians, nobody slapped anybody, nobody was seriously hurt. I’ve seen worse things plenty of times. I’ve seen two footed tackles, punches, snide raking, diving, ref baiting, crowd incitement and dozens of incidents which were far worse than went on at Old Trafford last season. Lauren got banned for 4 games for nothing at all. Who amongst us hasn’t wanted to strangle Phil Neville at some stage, ‘Sir’ Alex included? Exactly.
It was handbags, and United’s players pussied out of it. They didn’t have the balls to stand up for van Nistelrooy because they know he’s a diving, cheating cunt. If that’s the worst thing Ferguson’s ever seen in the sport of football then he’s had his eyes closed for years, the cunt. Quite how he thinks a bit of pushing and jostling is worse than doing a Kung-Fu kick on a fan is beyond me. Of course it’s just a wind-up ahead of next week’s game, and we’ll see how our ‘mob’ respond then.
What a very long blog today. Later.
